Episode 34: An Interview with Tom LeClair

Episode 34: An Interview with Tom LeClair

From Don DeLillo Should Win the Nobel Prize by Jeffrey Severs & Michael Streit

March 11, 2026 · 1h 48m · Episode 34

About this episode

The episode features an interview with Tom LeClair discussing his relationship with Don DeLillo and his literary contributions.

In Episode 34 DDSWTNP sit down for a revelatory talk with Tom LeClair, a founding critic in the study of DeLillo, his longtime friend and liaison to the literary world, and a figure who has both written fiction shaped by DeLillo’s and (he suggests) seen his own stories turned into scenes and dialogue by DeLillo himself. We get into LeClair’s relationship with DeLillo going back more than forty years, starting from the time the author sent him a copy of Ratner’s Star and proceeding to a 1979 interview in Athens that illuminated a then rather reclusive and secretive writer, including the story behind a card DeLillo handed out in those years reading “I don’t want to talk about it.” We also ask LeClair questions about his many readings of DeLillo’s and others’ works over the years, starting from his major books In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel (1987) and The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction (1989), studies that initiated LeClair’s career-long examination of encyclopedic works that form categories of “systext,” “monsterpiece,” and others he has defined in his many major magazine and newspaper reviews and in his current substack. What does LeClair…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jeffrey Severs, Michael Streit

Guest: Tom LeClair

Topics covered

  • Don DeLillo
  • literary criticism
  • interview
  • Tom LeClair
  • systems novel
  • fiction

Keywords

  • Tom LeClair
  • Don DeLillo
  • literary criticism
  • Ratner’s Star
  • Underworld
  • Point Omega
  • systems novel
  • fiction

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Ratner’s Star, In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel, The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction, Underworld, Point Omega

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